It was hot Saturday. Hot and humid. The kind of day that makes your collar wilt as soon as you walk out the door. Makes your clothes stick to you like a soggy sack. Pulls the curl right out of your hair. Makes two hours of work feel like ten. The kind of day that makes the sweat pop out and then just lie there because the air has already absorbed all the moisture it can absorb. It seemed like a mighty fine day to me for sitting in a recliner with a tall glass of iced tea in one hand and the remote control in the other, searching for specials on the Antarctic. My neighbor thought it was a good day for a bike ride.

He and some other zealots left Saint Joe around six in the morning, headed east on Highway 36. Out around Cameron, they turned south for a ways. Then, they turned east again, then south again. After that, I lost track. They ended up somewhere out in the area of Grain Valley, well east of Kansas City. In all, they logged a hundred and twenty-two miles. In one day. On bicycles.

As Larry Mahan would have said a few years ago, this wasn’t their first rodeo. The neighbor rides just about every day. Some days, he only does forty miles or so. Others, he’ll go for sixty. So, he’s in pretty good shape. His body fat proportion is probably somewhere in the neighborhood of point-oh-eight or something like that. Very lean and strong. So, long rides are something that he’s accustomed to and therefore is able to do without undue stress. “I was pretty wiped out when I got home last night,” he admitted on Sunday afternoon. “My legs didn’t want to work when I first woke up this morning but I’m starting to feel pretty normal again.” Well, of course, after all, it had been several hours since his marathon.

If I practiced forgiving and forbearing, giving and caring the way he practices bicycling, it’d probably feel pretty natural, wouldn’t it? Imagine if I applied similar time and effort to mercy, justice and righteousness! What if I logged turning the other cheek and returning good for evil with the same discipline and devotion? I suspect I would find myself developing a spiritual stamina that would far surpass my current meager level. It is the doing of a thing that cultivates endurance. No other way to it.

By the way, did I mention that my neighbor is seventy years old?